Stella. Emeric Bergeaud

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СКАЧАТЬ a simple fault—was as soon sawed into two or thrust into the boiling sugar cauldron as placed on the burning grills of the ovens or even buried alive!!!

      But such infamies could not remain unpunished. These crimes brought bolts of lightning down upon the heads of their authors. One day Justice, descending from on high, came to judge solemnly between the oppressors and the oppressed, the executioners and the victims. And vengeance was terrible! . . .

      * * *

      But what a pleasant outing to Saint-Domingue, the Queen of the Antilles! What beauty, what marvels are united in this place by the glorious Hand of the Creator! Friends of nature, philosophers, poets: come delight, instruct, and inspire yourselves in the midst of such magnificence; come fill yourselves with new emotions, warm your spirit with life-giving sunbeams, quench the thirst of your soul at the springs of poetry and love.

      The high mountains ennoble the appearance of this landscape, surrounding and protecting the country like an army of Titans on guard. At their feet stretch immense plains; their shadows fall over an eternal ocean of green. From their fertile flanks escape streams that leap, froth, and rumble at the bottom of cascades, as if from subterranean tempests. Lakes sleep upon some of their high peaks, mysterious waters that seem to form gigantic goblets. Poetic savannahs, luscious valleys, picturesque hills, virgin forests, leafy bamboos, and capriciously winding rivers that come from deep waters fresh and pure: all add to the savage grandeur of Saint-Domingue. Come, contemplate the sky and the sea that are nowhere else as beautiful, and nowhere else speak so much of God.

      What a delectable sojourn! . . .

      Here the vegetation, astonishing in its vigor and precocity, eternally luxurious, is one thousand times more prodigious after a hurricane—that grand and terrible phenomenon of the tropics—has broken the trees, uprooted the rocks, and turned nature entirely on its head. Here, Autumn hangs her garlands on the ruins, perfumes the woods, sews flowers everywhere, and doubles the magnificence of the cane fields by lending them white plumes that ripple in the wind. Here, Winter, the eldest sister of the seasons—who, in another hemisphere, shivers, weak and sad under her mantle of snow—is the youngest, the gayest, the most opulent of the daughters of the year: nothing equals the abundance of treasures that she draws forth.

      The swallow never left this happy country; the musicianI invariably continues giving his concerts and the wood pigeon continues his amorous cooing. See the lemon tree so green, so fresh, so fragrant that it seems to have been born of the voluptuous smile of nature. Remark upon the orange groves that man never planted, and that, achieving everything that poets have dreamed of graciousness and enchantment, perpetually display the luxury of their flowers and their golden fruit.

      Admire these forests of palms that rise until they are lost from view; before them, the voyager stops, seized by a sort of religious respect. These majestic trees with their trunks symmetrically aligned, sleek and straight, and with their domed foliage topped by a thin spire, resemble the innumerable columns of a temple with a thousand copulas, erected by some pious Jinn of the desert.

      Will we invite you to other spectacles? . . . Come to the shore in the evening, when the resplendent moon—that divine queen—takes hold of the heavens and shakes her diamonds into the sea; better still, climb one of our peaks, risen at the dawn of days. There you will feel your imagination exalt, and your spirit well over; there you can but kneel and pray in quiet ecstasy.1

      These landscapes need no painter. Let us leave the virgin field to He whose skill we have no intention of challenging, but also let us hasten to say that it is in this ravishing country that we find sites more picturesque than those of Switzerland, romantic landscapes to make Italy envious, and curiosities far superior to the charms of Spain.

      And—a remarkable thing—not one dangerous reptile, not one ferocious beast, not one enemy, even, exists to challenge man for the abundant fruits of his easy labor.

      neque illum;

      Flava Ceres alto nequicquam spectat Olympo . . . 22

      Such is this marvelous island whose slave name was Saint-Domingue.

      Marie the African

      The young family, captive in Saint-Domingue, was made up of a mother and her two sons, still adolescents. By some peculiarity or picturesque trick of nature, the complexion of the younger son was the hue of faded mahogany, while that of the elder was closer to the shade of darkest ebony. Yet this difference in color did not rule out a certain family resemblance that made them, at first sight, recognizable as brothers.

      Marie—the young mother—was black like her older son. She had reached that age where beauty becomes genuine without losing its charms. Her visage was melancholy and soft, with eyes reminiscent of the gazelle of her native land and a mouth set with shining pearls; her delicate and fine skin wore the polish of marble, thanks to the continual effects of her work in the fields. Such were the distinctive traits of this African face. The exposed shoulders of the young woman had the purity of classical models, and her flowing clothes left to guesswork the form that was paired with her graceful physiognomy.

      When Marie landed in the colony, perhaps twenty years before the era in which our tale begins, the Colonist, her master, deigned to notice her. She was soon compelled to cede to his sultan’s whim, and thus was born a second son to share the tenderness of this enslaved mother.

      The honor of having been the mistress of the Colonist brought with it no change in the fate of the young mother. She stayed constantly attached to the hoe, having periods of rest only when sickness occasionally came to seize, break, or somehow rip the tool from her hands. Her daily tasks were oppressive, and they left her barely enough strength at night to return to her shelter. Nonetheless, upon returning from the fields, she was still seen to be at work, making a modest meal for her sons, going to the river to fill their calebasses and hers, repairing their poor clothes. In short, she took charge of all the chores that could have added to her sons’ fatigue, as if she herself never tired, as if she were made of iron.

      Oh, a mother! What fertile spring of devotion and love, what inexhaustible trove of heroic and sublime virtues! A mother is more than a woman, more than an angel. She is Providence itself, descended into the foyer of Man to receive him as he enters life, to warm him with her breath, to nourish him with her milk, to support this weak pilgrim’s first steps along the path of the world, to guide his childhood, to counsel him in youth, to love him, to idolize him at every age, and sometimes, to die for him as a second Redeemer.

      The African woman and her sons worked together during the day, and night found them dutifully grouped around the boucan in the smoky hut where they all three lived. These short hours of respite, usually dedicated to free and frank conversation, were the only hours that really counted in the lives of these hapless souls who otherwise were condemned to live silently, trembling under the eye of the pitiless Colonist. A hidden observer—someone who might attend the daily supper of the young family at this moment when, released from their fetters, they were instantly delivered unto themselves like the beast of burden when unhitched from the plow or mill—would have been struck by the healthy glow of the African mother, seated between her two sons and presiding over this slaves’ meal. He would have seen the hideous mask of servility fall and the affecting creature of God reappear; he would have seen the woman as she had been made, formed by the paternal goodness of a God who did not create masters and slaves, but men.

      Their dining room, we dare say, was nothing more than functional. The most necessary piece of furniture was missing: there was no seat for happiness. The room was only large enough to contain these three persons and their fire. What more was needed for vile slaves? Seated on the naked earth, grouped around the flame of the boucan, these guests of misfortune, СКАЧАТЬ